


Elements of Attraction

by Achilles



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Chakra, First Contact, First Contact War, Gen, Magic, Military, Politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 05:18:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16152386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achilles/pseuds/Achilles
Summary: Sequel to the Potter Attraction set centuries after Reunification and the discovery of Martian ruins, after unification under the Solar (later Stellar) Alliance, after eezo, magic and chakra combined to take people to the stars. Peace was theirs in a Golden Age until a strange ship showed up out of the black. What followed would upset everything. Part previously published as Casus Belli on Fanfiction.Net





	1. A Peaceful Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The following work is fan fiction using characters from the Harry Potter world, trademarked by J. K. Rowling, and characters from the Mass Effect series, owned by Bioware. No ownership of their work is assumed or implied. This work is strictly for entertainment purposes and is not part of the official story line. All associated with this work are not profiting from the creation and or publication of this work. Any issues or questions regarding the publication of this work should be directed to the author or his specified representative.

###  **20th July, 2069. Potter Compound, Cranleigh, southern Britain, Earth. Home of the Lily Potter Foundation and of the architects of the Stellar Alliance.**

 

Footsteps in a darkened room echoed briefly as they approached a white circle in the centre. In the air, dimly revealing the occupant, first hundreds then thousands of brilliant points shined in the darkness. 

 

"And the sky full of stars. Each light represents one of our stealthed probes observing a star system. In a couple of months time, the first wave will be fully deployed."

 

Behind her, the door silently closed after admitting someone else, someone she knew well.

 

"First wave?" The newcomer asked as he looked around.

 

She nodded, her hair following half a second behind. "Just so. The second wave is already being prepared for points of interest, alien colonies, astronomical observations, ruins, mining resources, new worlds to settle." She turned around, coming up behind him.

 

"Ah. I had wondered if there would be a way to make the program pay for itself." His tone told her he was only teasing.

 

"Beyond the new understanding of our galaxy, you mean." Hermione played along as she rested her head on his shoulder.

 

"Beyond that, yes. Just because we can spend all that time and effort on the probes doesn't mean we won't get questions afterwards. We do need something to placate the public when they discover how much we spent on this grand undertaking."

 

“And they will find out, I know, Harry. Even if the initial investment is all coming out of our own pockets. As the driving force behind Reintegration of magicals back into society, even though it was nearly sixty years ago, they’ve, the public, have still not let up on watching us. Even after all we do to help fix the mistakes of the likes of the Dumbledores and Grindelwalds.” 

 

“Yes, even then. Something about being responsible people in charge of others, I think was the general idea.” Harry wrapped an arm around his wife. “The spread of powers is still only in its early stages, honey. Not even one in a hundred humans has magic or chakra. You can’t blame the majority for being cautious. The Wizarding World War, the Revelation, the follow-up with Reintegration, the riots… There have been so many changes since we met at Hogwarts. And this is going to be the biggest. The sky is truly no longer the limit.”

 

“We know people will want to explore now that we  _ can _ explore, thanks to that accidental discovery of fast FTL last year in that prototype accident. Pocket dimensions via magic or chakra allowing many times more eezo to be held, well, someone was going to try it sooner or later, even without the researchers being sent too much that time. Sending out drones with basic sensor and FTL comm packages to do the initial survey is the responsible thing to do, so that no one gets hurt.”

 

“And if it just so happens to bring you all the data first…” Harry teased his wife.

 

“Well, no one said I couldn’t satisfy my own curiosity at the same time.”

 

Harry chuckled. “True, dear. I always did like win-win solutions best.” 

 

###  **4th May, 2252, Sigma Draconis system,** **Σ** **Draconis II, Daedalus colony, Eos city**

 

Despite the number of Greek names used, Daedalus was a normal world in the ever-growing Stellar Alliance. The planet had finished terraforming a century earlier from a nitrogen and carbon dioxide atmosphere and was now home to a variety of small but thriving ecosystems across its surface.

 

Eos, meaning dawn, was the name the first settlers had optimistically given to the planetary capital as well as the the space station that orbited above it and the city was home to one of the many Astro Survey Centres built by the Lily Potter Foundation.

 

Despite the name, no surveying took place in these complexes. Instead, they were where lots of employees, generally university students looking to make some spending money, would examine information brought in from the probe network being deployed to more and more systems across the galaxy.

 

Around two centuries earlier, ruins found on Mars had first alerted the Alliance to the existence of aliens in the past, forever answering one of the great mysteries. The races of Earth were not the only intelligent life to arise in the universe. Since then, other ruins had been found on various planets and moons as the Alliance made its way out among the stars but no one had found living, intelligent, alien life.

 

The various students who worked in the data centres often daydreamed that maybe they would be the one to change all of that.  Lynette Walford wasn’t immune to these fantasies but when she was on the clock, she had to set them aside in order to get her work done. “At least as a centaur, I get to lie down on the job.” Lynette said to herself as she settled into one of  the specially cushioned stalls her people needed. “It sure beats stargazing the old-fashioned way.”

 

Early in her shift, she was interrupted in creating a report on the latest boring system, a red dwarf with little debris, no planets and no easy resources, by the computer alerting her to an anomaly. This happened often, the software finding something that triggered it to get a real person to look at the data, anything from a particular mineral being abundant in the system, nice for a small bonus but nothing special, to finding an already-habitable planet. Such a find could make her a small fortune as the discoverer, at least that was Foundation policy, rewarding them for good work.

 

This latest alert, however, quickly exceeded her expectations. The scout ship had dropped off this particular probe weeks before far outside any expected planetary system of the single F9 star, going back into FTL to head to the next system. Total time in the region under an hour then back to the safety of their own little, private universe.

 

They hadn’t stayed long enough, and couldn’t even if they had from so far away, to see the signs of life on one of the planets crowding its parent star for warmth in the inner system. That went double when the primary was so much brighter and so close. That job was for the probe which accelerated inwards, spiraling closer as it surveyed the star system.

 

Now, the probe’s telemetry data reported on three gas giants with their attendant moons and captured asteroids, one thick asteroid belt, a hot rock close to the star bigger than Mercury and even richer in metals and… 

 

“That’s odd. That almost looks as if…” Lynette didn’t notice as her voice trailed off. She didn’t really know she’d spoken to herself at all as she examined the data. The last significant body in the system was a rocky planet, almost as far out from its star as Mars is from Sol, placing it firmly in the Goldilocks Zone. That was already cause for interest but the probe’s spectrometer showed strong nitrogen and oxygen lines, water vapour… All the classic signs of a life-bearing world!

 

That wasn’t the oddity.  _ That _ was the patches of light on the planet’s night side! As she eliminated cause after possible cause from contention, she was quickly left with the one explanation she’d always wanted and never expected.

 

Her hand hit the button to summon her supervisor even before the smile broke out on her face. Belatedly, she remembered her class on scientific traditions, especially on great discoveries. Blushing, she was grateful that the booth was soundproofed, just in case she was wrong, after all.

 

“Eureka!”

 

_ ‘Now, what is taking that blasted man so long?!’ _ Lynette checked the time, astounded that what felt like half an hour had only been thirty seconds. The door opening and her supervisor entering took her mind off her realisation completely.

 

###  **7th June, 2252, Stellar Alliance Parliament, London, Earth**

 

“This is Saradhi Ingerman reporting live from outside Parliament. The decision on changes to the military budget in wake of the discovery of live aliens has again occupied the entire session today, just as it did yesterday, but analysts predict that the armed services won’t be getting everything they’re asking for. On the other side of the spectrum, pushes for immediate, open communication have again been voted down by a wide margin.” The reporter flashed a dazzling smile at the camera. 

 

“Our in-house experts believe that some increased funding is inevitable with the lion’s share going to the Navy to fund a new run of battlecruisers, possibly as many as another hundred! While the Potter Clan continue their support for greater preparedness, just in case, opponents of their extreme position point out that these aliens have showed no sign of hostility toward the Stellar Alliance or even an awareness of our existence. As such, the kind of measures supported by the Potters are premature, at best, warmongering, at worst.

 

“We’ll be sure to keep you updated on developments as and when they occur!

 

“This is Saradhi Ingerman for Heinlein Habitat News. Back to Daisy in the studio!”

 

From off-screen, a nearby tourist made himself heard before he was cut off. “Hey, gorgeous, you don’t need your Allure-”

 

###  **Codex: Stellar Alliance summary**

 

Stellar Alliance, the government for humanity and its allies, originated on Earth after the reunification of the wizarding and regular world. The revelation of the existence of non-human intelligent species made many previously-important differences seem small. Veela integrated peacefully enough since they were already allied to the more moderate wizard faction. Goblins were ‘conquered’, officially. Unofficially, they signed treaties with local governments allowing them to work in the banking sector in exchange for amnesty on past crimes. The clean slate worked to lure enough wizards over that it was all over bar the shouting. The move to unify also bled across into the regular world. This only accelerated when the rejuvenated space programs found the Prothean ruins on Mars. The cost and benefits of space were great enough that only China held out from the global initiative for long. The loss of their first Mars-bound vessel cost the conservatives their ascendance in Chinese politics and the internationalists soon rose to power, bringing the last of the major powers under the banner of the Sentient Alliance. Its mandate was to oversee all space activities on behalf of its signatories and to ensure equitable distribution of its benefits. Private enterprise was encouraged but monitored. SA funds went to establishing infrastructure and policing the new colonies.

 

Mars attracted a lot of early interest. Venus was later terraformed thanks to magic-enhanced technology allowing for massively expanded payloads carrying engineered bacteria and other supplies. Mars’ terraforming was a more gradual process.

 

Orbital colonies blossomed with a combination of environmental regulations on Earth and low transport costs from Earth orbit making orbit an attractive place for heavy industry. Asteroid mining expanded to keep pace.

 

Pluto exploration mission finds the damaged Relay. No repairs are possible. Despite the distances and various downplayed issues, later termed learning experiences, the Relay is dismantled and the eezo contents distributed to SA signatories. Revolutionary Eezo core unveiled. The static buildup problem of first generation cores solved by engineering of static-powered generators, thus cycling power back into ship systems. The use of Relay eezo increases efficiency even further, allowing for travel at 120ly/hr by time of first contact.

 

Dozens of colonies are created between finding the Ruins and the First Contact War. At first, many of the nearby ones are to extract local resources. A few are scientific outposts. Terraforming and orbital colonies abound in these cases. Only a few, very rare ‘garden worlds’ are found within hundreds of light years of Earth. These are considered  _ the _ prime real estate and SA remains highly protective of them. Naval fleet bases are established in their systems and settlement restricted to those with clean records in an effort to preserve their ecosystems. Fleet bases and tourism are the early major industries for these systems, supplanting the usual resource extraction and industrialization until local population increases to support it with native demand.


	2. Casus Belli

**Chapter 1 - Casus Belli**

###  **26th January, 2257. Outskirts of Calvera system, Stellar Alliance mining and neutron star research colony**

  
  


“It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”

 

Hermione Anne Potter didn’t know who had said that amidst the chaos on the ship’s bridge but she couldn’t help but agree. 

 

The captain of the Foundation merchant vessel  _ Star Witch _ had thought this run would be like any of the dozens of others she had made between Sol and Calvera. The neutron star was located some two hundred light-years from Earth and was the site of the Stellar Alliance’s first and still largest mining base for natural element zero, founded nearly two centuries earlier in the first years following the discovery of eezo. The world had been exploring the cornucopia of opportunities that flowed from the reunification of magical and regular societies, starting what her ancestor called their current golden age, at the time. While many on Earth were busily exploiting the possibilities of adding magical and chakra effects to technology to solve their problems, those exploring the High Frontier found long-dead alien ruins on Mars. Shadow clones were even more valuable in space where they could expand mission capabilities without costing more fuel.

 

Instead, the moment humanity had both feared and awaited since the Martian discovery had come. While her ship was in FTL on the two hour journey to the mining colony, real, honest-to-God aliens had turned up at the outskirts of the Calvera system. They had accelerated in slowly with their large lumbering vessel, ignoring any and all communications from the base or the prospecting boats until the base commander panicked when they got within long weapons range of the people he was paid to protect. He had fired off a warning shot with the base’s kinetic weaponry. The backup weapons fired in straight lines and so they were safer than relying on the guided missiles to obey their programming and miss the alien.

 

The aliens had swerved wildly, obviously panicked. By Alliance standards, the aliens’ drive was powerful but less effective, presumably fighting greater inertia. Then it had disappeared into FTL all without a word, leaving behind a mystery that had occupied people across human space. At the time, Hermione had been cursing her bad luck at missing such an historic encounter with actual aliens. She’d wished for them to come back.

 

A week later, as Hermione’s cargo was being checked for the final time before she took the full load of element zero and other precious materials back to the insatiable maw of Sol’s industry, a second incursion occurred. Instead of just one ship, there were a dozen, each clearly armed and of a different design from the first. Speculation was already rife that these new aliens might even be a different species!

 

The comm buoys in the system transmitted back a live video feed as it happened. The aliens moved in, ignoring all signals just as the first ship had, and opened fire on the closest prospecting boat on their way to the mining colony. While the civilian boat’s enchanted armor had been reinforced for keeping the occupants safe in the cluttered and irradiated system, it had no chance to shrug off even one of the projectiles the aliens had fired as they decelerated, much less twenty of them. The pilot had already been trying to get out of their path but her efforts had been for naught. The boat and its dozen goblin occupants were the first to die.

 

Shock held back the base commander for a vital thirty seconds, during which the hostile aliens got ever closer, deep into the base’s weapons range. Eventually, the aliens got into their own attack range of the base and opened fire again. The base carried far thicker and more capable armor than the boat had. In addition, it was a hell of a lot larger and, though its outer layer was damaged, it survived. 

 

The impact brought the defenders out of their shock and they finally returned fire. Their own kinetic weaponry was stopped by some sort of invisible barrier, reminiscent of the kind of shields that had often appeared in science fiction. The missiles, however, were far more effective. Though some of the missiles were shot down, the majority got close enough and detonated their nuclear payloads. The explosions, shaped by mass effect fields, excited the thin lasing rods into unleashing their X-rays. The invisible beams tore through the thin armor of the aliens like it wasn’t even there, unlike the shots from the railguns which rammed into some type of shield short of their targets.

 

Two of the enemy vessels were destroyed or disabled and the rest were damaged, but their second volley silenced forever the mining base. One by one, they methodically hunted down and destroyed the rest of the prospecting boats. As they did so, Hermione ran. Unfortunately, it wasn’t fast enough. Three of the enemy vessels turned to follow, their shots hammering at her rear armor as her pilot tried to dodge and evade their fire. After one of the longest minutes of her life, Hermione Potter, descendant of her famous and still gorgeous namesake, gave the order to activate their FTL despite the battle damage. She just hoped that her great-grandmother had kept the creativity that had helped take the Lily Potter Foundation to the stars. The Stellar Alliance they’d created was going to need all the help they could get.

Captain Dragus Maeionius, the commander of the patrol fleet assigned to clear out the claim jumpers, flared his mandibles in anger as he looked around the ruins. When the Volus corporation had sent in the report of an unauthorized presence in the system the Citadel had licensed to them, he had been expecting pirates or something. Not a full on mining colony. Even the initial fire that the Volus had taken seemed in line with that expectation. Instead, he gets here and they unleashed a wave of hellish missiles that set off nuclear bombs. Those would have been bad enough with their insane acceleration and the way they ignored standard ECM. But no, they were just the first stage for the energy weapons that had melted their way to killing thousands of good Turian soldiers.

 

He had ignored the nonsense the supposed pirates had broadcast. It was obviously just a ruse, a trick to make it appear they were a new species along with their prototype ships and weapons. Everyone knew how rare new spacefaring species were and desperate pirates came up with the most crazy ideas to save their worthless hides, so he had dismissed the signals as an obvious ruse.

 

Standard procedure was to kill pirates. When he had called the defenders pirates in front of his crew, he had sealed their fate without a care. His soldiers had boarded and shot every defender, armed or not, because they knew pirates often concealed their weaponry. It was standard procedure and good Turians were very good at following doctrine. He didn’t find out they were new aliens until there were many hundreds lying dead on both sides. While most of the aliens put up little resistance, injured and shocked by the attack, those who did fight inflicted heavy casualties despite the shock tactics of his raiding parties before each was brought down one by one. The reports of impossible abilities they’d transmitted up the chain of command were dismissed as some sort of trick, one that hadn’t saved them in the end.

 

And now he had to decide, did he tell anyone about his mistake or did he cover it up? Whatever else they were, these aliens had taken over a system that the Citadel Council had finally granted to a worthy Turian client so as far as he was concerned the trespassers had no right to be there. He ignored the little voice that told him the aliens had obviously been there first and for years looking at the size of their operation, the voice that said they were innocent. It was too late to bring them back. And he hadn’t seen any sign of a Relay or communications buoy. He had been proud, at the time, that his gunner had blown up that last ‘pirate’ before it got away into FTL. Without its survivors to spread the tale, no one could ever prove what had happened here. 

 

“Burn the bodies. Tell no one about the aliens we ran into out here. They were only pirates.” 

 

That was the order he gave to his crews and, good Turians that they were, they obeyed. Covering up meant they couldn’t take back the new weapons, the new technologies here, but if they did, some nosy Salarian or whiny Asari would want to know where pirates came up with them. None of his people could get the Spirits-damned stuff to work anyway. Better to bury the secrets with the dead.

 

It was a decision he hoped he could live with. Only time would tell.

###  **Either late 26th or early 27th.**

By the time Captain Hermione Anne Potter got her ship home half a day later, only trusting her ship’s damaged engines at fifteen percent of normal velocity, just about everyone in human space had seen the attack. The footage of the first contact had been scary enough but the alien attack was still being shown over and over on just about every news channel and likely would be for days. Talking heads had analyzed the footage to death, footage that had surprisingly continued for a full two hours after the attack until one of the alien ships had literally run into the comm buoy, cutting off contact. For whatever reason, they had ignored it before then.

 

It was one hour and forty-five minutes longer than was needed to see the aliens invade the ruins of the base, to see flashes of weapons fire as they killed off the few survivors.

 

Seven years ago, one of the unmanned probes had seen the first evidence of living aliens thousands of light-years to the galactic south-east, far beyond the outermost Alliance outpost. Unlike the ruins on Mars, these aliens were living on a planet well within the ‘Goldilocks zone’ of the local star, a planet green with life. Eighty billion humans had seen the footage taken from the edge of that system as alien ships moved between the inner system and the glowing artifact that resembled the cracked one found orbiting Pluto. The debates about contacting the aliens had gone nowhere. While the Alliance was curious enough, the ruins on Mars, and the new aliens’ own weaponry, meant it was also cautious about opening itself up to contact. Probes had been left on the outskirts of the system, watching and gathering data on the aliens’ activities but not approaching closer than the orbit of the system’s outer gas giant.

 

Linguists still tried to crack the alien language, however, and while they had made progress, they were far from reaching a consensus on translating back and forth between Batarian and the various Alliance languages. While they eagerly listened in on more broadcasts, adding to the data collected, the Stellar Alliance Parliament had decided against making open contact. 

 

Those same broadcasts had slowly given a picture of a society unlike the Stellar Alliance, one where certain individuals appeared to be abused but it was unclear as yet if they were slaves or something like a prisoner work program, especially as some of the victims seemed to be from either another alien species or the Batarians’ variation amongst themselves was far larger than humanity’s own. There was simply not enough information to be certain of what was going on without interfering and widespread opposition to interfering without that proof of a problem. Linguists were still arguing over the validity of their translations.

 

Either way, many people wanted nothing to do with them and supported the decision to avoid the barbarians. Since the Batarians never showed any sign of noticing humanity in return, it was felt this was good enough. Space was vast. Surely, the galaxy would be big enough for both to live in peace, especially if the Batarians never found them. Although the Lily Potter Foundation pushed for a build up of the Navy and, indeed, the Alliance Parliament authorized an expansion, it was only minor. The aliens were too far away to worry about, most people believed, eighty billion citizens mostly content to live their own lives until something disturbed their peaceful routines.

 

Now, those tens of billions of people had watched the massacre of a peaceful mining base by ruthless aliens. 

 

The Golden Age was over, tarnished by renewed specter of war as just over two centuries of peaceful exploration and expansion came to an end with the first shots of a new conflict.

###  **Early 27th Jan.**

As soon as she had her ship safely in the docking cradle, engineers were swarming over it to examine the damage. Not only was repairing her ship a high priority from a morale perspective but the Stellar Alliance Navy was very interested in seeing what kinds of damage was inflicted by their enemies. There were both defensive and offensive sides to analyze, to ensure maximum effectiveness of the Navy in the war to come.

 

The captain, however, had been pulled away from her precious ship to report to the Admiralty. Since she and her vessel were civilian not military, their legal ability to order her around was a gray matter. However, her boss, and great-grandfather, Harry Potter, owner of the Foundation that chartered the starship, did have the ability to order her to appear and cooperate with their inquiry.

 

The looks she got as she walked the corridors of Navy HQ were mixed, to say the least. Some appeared to resent her, as if she were the one who had brought the aliens down upon humanity, but the majority seemed intensely curious beneath their professional masks. She hoped her own mask hid her reactions to their stares.

 

She arrived at the portal where the Board were meeting, with a pair of Marines standing guard. They obviously recognized her but still checked her identity exactly as they were supposed to. When the DNA scanner, always the slowest piece of equipment, confirmed she was herself thirty seconds later, they let her in. She took an unobtrusive breath to steady her nerves.

 

What she saw as she looked at each of the people on the Board blew away the little calm she had gained. Not one of the Admirals, all of them were there waiting to talk to her. The tension eased, a little, when she saw both Harry Potter and Hermione, her namesake, sitting in the front row of the audience and the older witch giving her that same gentle smile she remembered from her childhood.

 

Three grueling hours later, the Board took a recess to consider her testimony and the famous pair came up to her. Hermione hugged her bushy haired ancestor who rubbed small circles on her back as she shivered from the adrenaline leaving her system. Harry cleared his throat quietly and the ship captain noticed that the noise from the crowd had vanished during the hug.

 

“I thought you could use a break.” Harry explained to his great-granddaughter’s questioning gaze. “I wanted to say I am proud of you. You got your ship back home safe with all her crew. We can always replace the ship and people are more important than equipment.”

 

“Thank you, sir.”

 

“Sir? I’m hurt!” Harry pouted.

 

“Sorry, I mean thank you, Grandfather. It means a lot to me.”

 

“I thought it might.” Harry grinned. “And it’s still true.” He let out an ‘Oof!’ when she gave him a rib-cracking hug too. “I swear she gets that from you.” He teased his wife, accepting the glare before she softened and joined them.

###  **Late 27th Jan**

“So what are you going to do now?” Harry asked her later over a private dinner between the three of them.

 

“What do you mean, Grandpa?” The young woman hid her nervousness behind the informal mode of address, though it did no good.

 

“You have a few new options ahead of you, dear. The Navy is going to go through a massive expansion due to what happened in Calvera, obviously. The response to discovering the Batarians was nothing compared to what we’ll see now. An emergency bill has already passed to authorize a new shipbuilding program for them, starting with building a hundred new long-range cruisers for finding their territory as well as sixty missile-heavy battlecruisers and screening elements, doubling their strength in that class, just on the basis of what we saw. Certain elements, such as your favorite Grandpa, are pushing for even more than that. There will be plenty of supply runs so there will be no shortage of work for you if you want it, whether on the Navy runs or elsewhere.”

 

His wife took over smoothly. “Likewise, they will be wanting to get their hands on as many trained spacers as they can get to crew the new ships. You have experience with these aliens, too. They’ve already sent out feelers asking if you would be interested in joining up.”

 

“You mean they want me as a mascot, don’t you?” Hermione the younger bit out.

 

“There is some element of that in their thinking, I’m sure.” Harry admitted easily. “And in many ways, I can see their point. It would make the military’s job easier of keeping support for the war for however long it takes if they can say you joined up. However, they want you for more than just your fame. Trust me, they know better than to lie to  _ us _ .”

 

It was a matter of public record that the Lily Potter Foundation was one of the Navy’s strongest corporate supporters and partners on many building programs. The new warship construction would be no different and the Foundation expected to make a nice little profit, though not too nice. Profiteering from the war would have been short-sighted at best. The lines between the Navy’s Bureau of Ships and Bureau of Weapons and the Foundation’s Space Research and Development Division had been blurred since the Foundation had championed the Navy’s creation, no matter how much certain quarters complained. It was unavoidable given how much work the Foundation did in the field and how steadfast they supported the Navy.

 

His wife smiled at their descendant. “In fact, they were hinting about putting you on a fast track to captain of your own ship in the Navy. They’re looking at creating a course to let merchant captains bring their ship handling skills to their side of the street.”

 

“It was something they have had on the books for a while but they never had a reason before to use the emergency measure. As I’m sure you understand, that’s all changed.” Harry explained, taking advantage of his descendant’s surprised silence. “I have seen our estimates of the new budget. They’re hoping to complete the new program in six months. We doubt they’ll be able to make it, mostly due to the training bottleneck, but we’re going to do our best to help them meet their deadline.”

 

“So it’s certain it’s war?” The younger woman wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Certainly, she wanted to make those aliens pay for killing her friends and colleagues. However, could they win? How many more people would die fighting them? Would it be worth it? No one knew the answers she needed. 

 

“As long as they refuse to talk to us, as long as they make no effort to try to coexist, what choice do we have?” Harry asked gently, knowing that few people alive in the SA had any real idea of what war was like. That ignorance was the price of their Golden Age. “We know they use radio band transmissions but they didn’t reply at all. A naval task force is already on the way to Calvera to see what can be found.”

 

The younger woman nodded.

 

“To get back on topic, dear, what do you think? Harry and I will back whatever choice you make but you should decide soon if you can.”

 

“And if I can’t decide?”

 

“There will always be a place for you with the Foundation, honey. You’re family and we always make sure that our family have the skills to succeed.” Harry addressed her actual concern rather than answering her question directly.

 

Hermione Anne Potter, captain of the  _ Star Witch _ , felt a surge of relief at that. At some level, she had feared that the Potter Clan would condemn her for cowardly running from battle, despite the way her ship had no business being anywhere near one. The support of the undisputed head of the Clan, the man who had forced the Wizarding World to rejoin humanity, meant there was no chance of that.

 

With that worry magically cleared up, she was able to look at her options with a fresh mind. Although she would miss the  _ Star Witch _ , she had lost friends in the battle. She was going to make sure the aliens paid for what they did.

###  **Late Jan 27th**

As it happened, the task force had just left for Calvera. Their departure had been delayed, partly from shock at what the aliens had done, partly from the simple need to assemble the ships, relay their orders and get them on their way. Rather than rush out with the handful of anti-pirate ships that were always kept ready, Admiral Jones decided to hold out for greater weight of metal to respond. There was no one left to rescue anyway.

 

As they hit FTL, Jones considered his temporary command. A full three squadrons of eight cruisers escorting one squadron of battlecruisers with a screen of thirty-two destroyers, it was the largest attack force in Navy history. ‘And if those aliens are still there, we may just need them.’

 

A part of him was justifiably worried at just what they were getting into. First Contact with aliens who could be part of a galaxy-spanning empire or simple pirates, who knew what resources they had behind them. However, he had volunteered for the Navy for a reason and he’d be damned before he let anyone attack his people.

 

His staff were busy putting together what little intel they had on the aliens for planning a battle if they were still there. Jones didn’t know if he expected they would stick around. On the one hand, the defenders were dead and the aliens had taken losses of their own. If they were human, they might want to retreat and lick their wounds. They weren’t human, though. On the other hand, they might have stayed to examine the colony, even try to get samples of SA technology.

 

Two hours later, the fleet came out of FTL and launched a swarm of recon drones ahead of them. Jones kept a stoic face as he waited for the data to come in.

 

“They’ve gone, Captain!” The lieutenant at sensors called out to his flag captain.

 

“I heard.” Jones told the woman wryly when she looked at him. “Send marines in to examine the main facility and then detail the destroyers to rendezvous with the ships we lost and deploy the replacement drones-”

 

“Sir?” The same lieutenant interrupted him nervously.

 

Jones paused and gave him permission to speak.

 

“Admiral Jones, sir, the drones have spotted the aliens’ wrecks. They didn’t take them with them.”

 

“Very good, Lieutenant Compton. Message the fleet. The alien vessels have top priority. If we can, I want to take them back home for study. Send in shuttles with clones only. Keep all other vessels beyond any possible blast radius and ensure all safety precautions are taken. Shuttles are to be abandoned at the first sign of contamination.”

 

“Aye, aye, Admiral.”

 

Admiral Jones forced himself to sit back and appear to be calm and relaxed, despite his burning curiosity. If circumstances were different, it would be his clones going into the enemy ships, his clones first to see the faces of these murdering aliens, his the first to discover what awaited humanity and its allies. He wouldn’t quite trade his rank for the chance but it was a close call.

 

Jones was far from the only one to look up when video from the first of the clones reached one of the alien craft. The admiral was, however, one of the few who could take the time to watch as they landed on the hull and cut their way through. Around him, his flag captain ran her ship and his staff worked on their various jobs as the clones entered ship, a monster at over seven hundred meters long.

 

At least, it had been until the colony's defenses savaged it. Now, there were great tears dozens of meters long running down its side and gaping holes in the armor. “It's strange. You would expect an alien race capable of building such a behemoth would make more use out of its size. If we had all that surface area available, you can bet we would mount more weapons and better armor than that.”

 

The admiral had realized he was speaking his thoughts but didn't think anyone had overheard him until his flag captain quietly replied, “It is almost as if they don't use space expansion.”

 

“You're right. However, the possibilities were already inherent in mass effect technology. Surely even if they did lack wizards of their own, they would have incorporated it once they learned to use element zero?”

 

“That is what we would do. They are aliens, sir.”

 

Jones conceded the point, musing as he waited for more information to come in. It was quickly apparent that Captain Norman was right. There was no sign of any space expansion, no sign of anything too far beyond their own abilities, things that were in principle comprehensible to the scientists and engineers who would study it later. ‘Not that we can be sure of that without capturing some of their designers.’ 

 

While his hastily drawn up fleet searched the system and the clones examined the enemy ships, Jones considered his next moves. He was confident that his ships would defeat the aliens if they came back in the same strength as last time but just as confident that they wouldn’t do that. Either they wouldn’t return at all or they would return in greater numbers.

 

His job was to find out all he could, hopefully before the aliens returned.

###  **Feb 5th**

As it turned out, it was a stressful week for Admiral Jones and his crews. Having to keep the crews at heightened readiness was going to do that already but the prospect of facing off against aliens was more than enough to ensure there was little grumbling at that command. There had been a single scare when a small alien vessel had dropped out of FTL on the outskirts of the system then flashed away again later without ever coming within extreme weapons range, though no one knew what its purpose was.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Admiral, there is a priority communication from Earth for you.”

 

“Put it through.” Jones tidied up his desk quickly in the few seconds before he was looking at the face of his boss.

 

“Jones. Anything further to report?” Fleet Admiral Robb asked without preamble.

 

“No. The Turians,” he replied, tasting the unfamiliar name, “weren’t as incompetent about securing their technology as we had initially hoped. The few bodies and body parts we found hidden aboard the salvaged ships are all in stasis now and Medical has sent on their autopsy results. Certainly, we can’t do anything further here with the Turian samples we have. We don’t have the facilities or the experts for that, however much I hate speaking ill of my people. They just aren’t trained for that. We’re also ready to return the ashes of the civilians to their next of kin now that magical forensics have finished identification.”

 

“I expected as much. Freighters are en route to your location to ferry the wrecks back to Alpha Base. The remains will be returned as soon as possible. While certain elements might like to retain the ashes for further study, there is nothing we could gain from the delay that would be worth the cost. Better to bring them home and study the aliens instead.”

 

“Sir, with all due respect, is that the wisest decision? I know they have better facilities there to examine the wrecks but perhaps a more isolated research station would be safer.” Jones bit his tongue after that. Even if the pair had a good working relationship, jumping over his boss’ decision like that wasn’t smart. Obviously, the stress had worn on him more than he’d thought.

 

Thankfully for him, Robb was more understanding than some others would have been in his place. “It would be safer but we want those wrecks secured just in case these Turians return and force you from the system. Once the new deep space research facility is ready for them, they’ll be transferred there for study.”

 

“Sorry, sir. I should have expected that there was more to the orders.” ‘And I shouldn’t have been so foolish as to speak like that on a comm channel.’

 

“Quite alright. You and your people have done good work out there. Just so you know, the freighters’ escort is under the command of Commodore Bell.” The admiral smiled at the surprise on Jones’ face. “I’m sure the two of you will find working together to be no hardship.”

 

“Not at all! And thank you, sir.” 

 

Jones’ relationship with the decorative but also competent officer was an open secret in the Navy. As long as he didn’t openly flaunt the regulations or let their performance suffer, Admiral Robb was prepared to give them a pass. Besides, they had worked well together in the past. He didn’t expect they would let him down now.

 

“See that I don’t regret my choice. Fleet Command out.”

###  **Feb 5th**

Han Doran liked the status he got working as a semi-independent prospector for the Elkoss Combine. The Volus-owned and run corporation was sensible, making cheaper versions for the mass market rather than trying to produce the very best quality and only selling to the very rich. This had made the corporation far richer than many of their competitors and they had leveraged that wealth into power over politicians and bureaucrats on hundreds of worlds.

 

It was that power that led to them being granted first rights on the Calvera system. And when Doran had found interlopers at the system, he had been understandably upset. He didn’t care why they had been there or what their excuses would have been. They had clearly stolen his ticket to the good life! What good were the words of aliens who had no credits to spend? Even worse when they had shot at him, or so he had claimed to his superiors when he had returned from the initial inspection. He didn’t care who had moved into the system, only that their presence was blocking the development of the resources for the Combine, and his 0.01% cut of the profits.

 

Now, he was having to spend his influence like water to get the higher-ups to go back to Calvera. The prospect of more combat in the system, even though the Turians had wiped out the claim-jumpers, was dousing the usual greed that normally dominated the decision-making process. At this rate, it would be a month or more before they even sent a follow-up vessel. Worse, he might not be on it, which would hurt his claims for the profits to be made.

 

The one universal constant, it seemed, was bureaucracy and bureaucrats screwing everything up. Not even a prospector for the powerful Elkoss Combine was immune to its effects.

###  **Feb 22nd**

Now that humanity had a name for their opponents and, more importantly, samples of their equipment to analyze, they were finding similarities between them and the Batarians, the first aliens they had discovered a few years earlier.

 

While they were not the same race, something that became obvious once the first Turian bodies were discovered, they did share much of their technology base in common, including certain communication protocols. It was clear that they were in contact with the Turian aggressors, though just what their relationship was remained unclear.

 

From there, the analysis of the Batarians became a major priority for the Alliance’s intelligence services only slightly behind the Turians themselves. The Potter Foundation helped out, diverting half a dozen transports to deliver more spy probes, a new covert model that they would risk closer in to any targets, built not only with an integrated FTL comm but also with an updated self-destruct system among other security features in case of discovery. 

 

Within a week, the Alliance’s Office of Naval Intelligence had tentatively concluded that the Turians could not see any cold target with their sensors. Without that active electromagnetic emission, it seemed that Alliance ships and assets should be relatively safe from being detected. The civilians’ own attempts to make peaceful contact had enabled the aliens to target and kill them.

 

It didn’t make sense for the Turians’ sensors to be so weak. Surely any space-faring civilization would have developed more sophisticated sensors. But the evidence appeared to show otherwise. The captured hardware that they had gotten working was poor by human standards at finding anything that wasn’t a beacon of thermal energy against the background of space, though maybe the Turians were better at extracting information from their poor hardware than Alliance engineers believed possible.

 

One explanation was that their own ships, from the Batarians to the lumbering ship that first showed up at Calvera to the Turian warships, all were fiercely radiating in the thermal bands as a result of their own movements. They had no need for better sensors when everyone they dealt with had the same problem at hiding their emissions. One analyst was of the opinion that it was their barriers that made hiding their emissions such a difficult proposition, though the jury was still out on that, and it would remain that way until humanity managed to build their own versions.

 

The real jewel was the computers from the aliens’ wreckage. Now that they could compare, there were similarities apparent in the designs between the ruins found on Mars and the efforts to decipher the Prothean ruins proved to be a useful starting point for analyzing the Turian hardware. It quickly became clear that the Prothean hardware, despite being nearly fifty thousand years old, was still superior to the Turian, a fact borne out by the way that the new technology was within the grasp of human reverse engineering efforts, if barely.

 

Within the memory storage of the computers, researchers found a lot of dross as well as some immediately useful items, the first being the home base for this particular group of ships, Patrol Group 1701, with its location given both in terms of which jumps were used as well as its distance in relation to certain neutron stars, fixing its position in the galaxy. The reference stars were known to the Alliance and the jumps seemed to use the odd tuning fork artifacts. While getting more information on the jump network was nice, it was the location of the alien base that was the goldmine.

 

Further digging found some basic information on the size of the Notchimus base which lay 1500 light years, four jumps, away from the Calvera system and was home to its own minor ship repair yard. This made it a major target for the Alliance as removing that base would cripple Turian force projection towards Alliance space. 

 

For whatever reason, the aliens were averse to getting too far from their jump gates, and indeed, Calvera had been near the limit of their reach. Once they got rid of Notchimus base and deconstructed the gateways that lay close to Alliance space, they would be that much safer from further attacks.

 

Without its removal, too much of the Alliance Navy would be relegated to defense, as useless to winning the war as if they’d been destroyed. With Notchimus gone, they could free up far more of their fleet to go on the offensive, making sure they seized and retained the initiative, and ultimately saving the lives of the people they were sworn to protect.

 

Some in the Navy pushed to capture the base, and its shipyard, intact but this was out of the question. From what little could be gleaned from the Turian computers, the base, barely a minor one by their enemy’s standards, still supported over a hundred ships on patrol and had its own defense platforms. There would be hundreds or thousands of defenders, unknown defenses and traps and the enemy’s fleet could come in at any time, forcing them to retreat and unable to deny the enemy their forward base.

 

A recon mission was authorized, Commodore Bell to command it now that she was back from escorting the salvaged Turian ships, leading her own squadron of destroyers to deploy sensor drones in the target system. 

 

It was certainly impressive, Commodore Bell admitted to herself in the privacy of her own mind. The Turian Hierarchy, as they now knew their opponent to be, were an old spacefaring race, at least compared to those from Earth, who had been around a long time. The defenses on the base reflected that fact, with a shoal of torpedo launchers guarding it from close in and twenty ships on patrol further out. None of them were as large as the monster that had attacked at Calvera and they seemed to operate in small packs for mutual support. They had looked for the butchers of Calvera with no success, not that the odds were in their favor, but information about the base was her primary mission here. Not that command would have objected if she did see and shoot the bastards, of course.

 

“Time to get out of here. Make sure the comm buoys are working at 100% then we’re leaving. Comms, make sure the other ships know the plan.”

 

“Aye aye, Ma’am. Whisker lasers already online and message sent. Estimate ten minutes until we can receive confirmation.”

 

“Very good.” She watched impassively as the timer ticked down to zero, holding back the sense of relief she felt when the other ships, now scattered across the Notchimus system, acknowledged her orders. Five minutes later, they were into FTL, hopefully with the Turians none the wiser.

 

Only time would tell.

 

By the time she got back to Alpha base, it was clear that the Turians had noticed something. Apparently, even their crap sensors weren’t blind to the flash of someone entering FTL. However, they had ignored the comm buoys and spy probes left in the system, objects that were as interesting in the thermal bands as so many small rocks, something that all systems had from the days of their creation. Once again, the Cooling Charms seemed to shield them from detection and plans were brought forward to ensure that everything the Navy had was thus protected.

 

When an intensive search of their system out to the equivalent of Jupiter’s orbit turned up nothing of note in the following three days, the ships returned to their normal patrol patterns, all except for one that continued to search for whatever had been there.

 

The Alliance Parliament pronounced it good enough and Operation Blitz was a go.

 

The first requirement for the operation was getting enough ships. For this, the Navy had pulled in fifteen battlecruisers, five hundred meters externally from bow to stern brimming with missile ports. Accompanying them were fifty destroyers, a hundred meters of the best sensors, point defense lasers and mass accelerator cannons that could be fitted to the more limited surface area of the design, and twenty assorted cruisers as their screen. It was expected that these forces would be ample for dealing with the defending ships, though the base might be a different story.

 

The second was a plan. Monitoring of the Notchimus system showed that ships left and arrived at all hours but that there were regular lull periods over a 28-hour cycle, possibly indicating the aliens’ day-night cycle. During that period, fewer ships arrived and none left. Obviously, the Alliance chose to time their attack for the beginning of the putative sleep period, when fewer ships would be available to defend the base and it was possible that the defenders would be less alert.

 

By arriving at a large fraction of lightspeed relative to the defenders, straining the Cooling Charms to the limit, they would further reduce the amount of warning when they launched the missiles. Each ship would launch as many missiles as they could control, though light speed delays would render that control arthritic before the missiles engaged the enemy. At that point, they would have to hand over control to the missiles’ own guidance software, hoping that the number of missiles would make up for the lower accuracy that would produce. That and the single ‘comm buoy missile’ and recon drones they launched to carry back telemetry at FTL speed. Too bad that current tech couldn’t handle a two-way connection but a one-way would still cut the lag in half, something the Navy had never had to deploy before. It was expected that it would come as a surprise to the Turians, but they were still sending in enough ships to get the job done no matter what.

 

The very next ‘night’ for Notchimus base, the Alliance struck. 


End file.
